video games are good, except when they're not

July 27, 2016December 3, 2016

Day #209: Zombie Revenge

It’s going to be a short one today, as time and energy levels are not on my side. It’s a shame because I’ve wanted to write about the Dreamcast for a while. Well, more specifically, for this. I actually wrote quite a bitabout it in my younger days, but I’ve really done nothing this year to put forth the impression that the Sega Dreamcast is my favorite video game console of all time (which it is).

The irony is that when I didn’t require myself to play something different every day, old Dreamy was in constant rotation. I’d often go through phases, sometimes lasting a week or more, when the only interactive entertainment that I cared to consume was from the waning days of a beautifully flawed company. The entire Dreamcast library is really a snapshot of Sega at peak “not giving a shit” mode, either already resigned to their fate or simply wanting to carve their niche with as many oddball titles as they could, profits be damned.

The odd didn’t always translate to “good” mind you, but games like Zombie Revenge have such a distinct DNA that it would be impossible to imagine them on another console, putting forth a very specific yet endearing awkwardness that could only exist in a certain time and place. It may be because that time and place just happened to be around when the grand development shift was getting ready to occur; when Japan no longer dominated the conversation and Western devs grew to the size of movie studios.

We definitely lost something at that point, though obviously, a mediocre (but still often fun) arcade beat-em-up isn’t really the pillar for me to rest that statement on. I just wish we took a bit more time to recognize and perhaps even try to reimplement of that sense of style and wonder that feels left in a bygone era.

I want more games where you German Suplex zombies, is what I’m saying.